Shintani's Zeta Function Is Not a Finite Sum of Euler Products
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SHINTANI’S ZETA FUNCTION IS NOT A FINITE SUM OF EULER PRODUCTS FRANK THORNE Abstract. We prove that the Shintani zeta function associated to the space of binary cubic forms cannot be written as a finite sum of Euler products. Our proof also extends to several closely related Dirichlet series. This answers a question of Wright [22] in the negative. 1. Introduction In this paper, we will prove that Shintani’s zeta function is not a finite sum of Euler products. We will also prove the same for the Dirichlet series counting cubic fields. Our work is motivated by a beautiful paper of Wright [22]. To illustrate Wright’s work, we recall a classical example, namely the Dirichlet series associated to fundamental discrim- inants. We have s 1 s s ζ(s) s L(s, χ4) (1.1) D− = 1 2− +2 4− + 1 4− , 2 − · ζ(2s) − L(2s, χ4) D>0 X as well as a similar formula for negative discriminants. These formulas may look a bit messy. However, if one combines positive and negative discriminants, one has the beautiful formulas s s s ζ(s) 1 s (1.2) D − = 1 2− +2 4− = Disc(K ) , | | − · ζ(2s) 2 | v |p p [Kv:Qp] 2 X Y X≤ and L(s, χ4) arXiv:1112.1397v3 [math.NT] 9 Nov 2012 s s (1.3) sgn(D) D − = 1 4− . | | − L(2s, χ4) X These are special cases of much more general results. Wright obtains similar formulas for quadratic extensions of any global field k of characteristic not equal to 2, which are in turn n the case n = 2 of formulas for Dirichlet series parameterizing the elements of k×/(k×) . He proves his results by considering twists of the Iwasawa-Tate zeta function (n) n (1.4) ζ (ω, Φ) = ω(t) Φ(t x) d×t A. × × | | ZA /k x k× X∈ We will not explain Wright’s notation here, but suffice it to say that the case n = 1 is the zeta function of Tate’s thesis [17]. This zeta function may be viewed as the zeta function associated to the affine line, viewed as a prehomogeneous vector space of degree 1, on which GL(1) acts by φ(t)x = tnx. Generalizing (1.2) and (1.3), Wright proves that all of these zeta functions can be written as finite linear combinations of Euler products. He further remarks 1 2 FRANK THORNE that “an analogue of [these formulas] for the space of binary cubic forms is currently unknown; although, such a formula would be immensely interesting.” Wright is referring to the Shintani zeta function associated to the space of binary cubic forms. This zeta function was introduced by Shintani [16] and further studied by Datskovsky and Wright [21, 6, 7] and many others. This zeta function is defined as follows: The lattice of integral binary cubic forms is defined by (1.5) V := au3 + bu2v + cuv2 + dv3 : a,b,c,d Z , Z { ∈ } and the discriminant of such a form is given by the usual equation (1.6) Disc(f)= b2c2 4ac3 4b3d 27a2d2 + 18abcd. − − − There is a natural action of GL2(Z) (and also of SL2(Z)) on VZ, given by 1 (1.7) (γ f)(u, v)= f((u, v) γ). · det γ · The Shintani zeta functions are given by the Dirichlet series 1 s (1.8) ξ±(s) := Disc(x) − , Stab(x) | | x SL2(Z) VZ | | ∈Disc(Xx)\>0 ± and Shintani proved that they have analytic continuation to C and satisfy a functional equation. These zeta functions are interesting for a variety of reasons; see, e.g., [18] and [7] for applications to counting cubic extensions of number fields. Also note that Datskovsky and Wright’s work yields an adelic formulation of Shintani’s zeta function, similar to (1.4). Some further motivation for Wright’s question is provided by work of Ibukiyama and Saito [10]. They consider the zeta functions associated to the prehomogeneous vector spaces of n n symmetric matrices, for n > 3 odd. In particular they prove, among many other interesting× results, explicit formulas for these zeta functions as sums of two products of the Riemann zeta function. With these results in mind, one might hope to prove similar such formulas for the zeta functions (1.8). In this note we answer Wright’s question in the negative, and prove that no such formulas exist. Theorem 1.1. Neither of the Shintani zeta functions ξ±(s) defined in (1.8) admits a rep- resentation as a finite sum of Euler products. s k In other words, if we write ξ±(s)= n a(n)n− , we cannot write a(n)= i=1 cibi(n) for real numbers ci and multiplicative functions bi(n). It is interesting to note that these zetaP functions do have representationsP as infinite sums s of Euler products. Of course, there is a tautological such representation, writing n− = s (1+n− ) 1 and thus regarding each term in (1.8) as a difference of Euler products. However, Datskovsky− and Wright [6] proved the much more interesting formula 2 s Rk(2s) (1.9) ξ±(s)= ζ(4s)ζ(6s 1) Disc(k) − , − o(k)| | Rk(4s) Xk SHINTANI’S ZETA FUNCTION IS NOT A FINITE SUM OF EULER PRODUCTS 3 where the sum is over all number fields of degree 1, 2, or 3 (up to isomorphism) of the correct sign; o(k) is equal to 6, 2, 1, or 3 when k is trivial, quadratic, cubic and non-Galois, or cubic 3 and cyclic respectively; and Rk(s) is equal to ζ(s) ,ζ(s)ζk(s),ζk(s),ζk(s) respectively. The proof of Theorem 1.1 is not difficult, and it illustrates an application of recent work of Cohen and Morra ([4]; see also Morra’s thesis [11] for a longer version with more examples). For a fundamental discriminant D, they prove explicit formula for the Dirichlet series 2 s (1.10) ΦD(s) := a(Dn )n− , n X where a(Dn2) is the number of cubic fields of discriminant Dn2. More generally, they prove a formula for the Dirichlet series counting cubic extensions of number fields K/k, such that the normal closure of K contains a fixed quadratic subextension K2/k. The formula is rather complicated, and it involves sums over characters of the 3-part of ray class groups associated to Q(√D, √ 3) (or more generally to K2(√ 3)). However, these formulas take much simpler forms when− we assume k = Q, and when− we further restrict to D for which we can control these class groups. We will apply the following special case of their result: Theorem 1.2 (Cohen-Morra [4]). If D < 0, D 3 (mod 9), and 3 ∤ h(D), then we have ≡ 2 s 1 1 2 2 − (1.11) a(Dn )n = + 1+ s 1+ s . −2 2 3 −3 p n D =1 X ( Yp ) Furthermore, if D > 0, D 3 (mod 9), and 3 ∤ h( D/3), then there exists a cubic field E of discriminant 27D such≡ that − − 2 s 1 1 2 2 − (1.12) a(Dn )n = + 1+ s 1+ s −2 6 3 −3 p n D =1 X ( Yp ) 1 1 ωD(p) + 1 s 1+ s , 3 − 3 −3 p D =1 ( Yp ) where ω (p)=2 if p splits completely in E, and ω (p)= 1 otherwise. D D − Remark. In fact, p splits completely in E if and only if it does so in its Galois closure E(√ 3D), and this version of the condition will be more convenient in our proof. − The equation (1.11) is Corollary 7.9 of [4]. The analogue (1.12) does not appear in [4, 11], so in Section 3 we describe how this formula follows from Cohen and Morra’s work. Moreover, in forthcoming work with Cohen [5] we will generalize (1.12) to any D, positive or negative, and we will also prove an analogous formula for quartic fields having fixed cubic resolvent. We can now summarize our proof of Theorem 1.1, in the easier negative discriminant s case. First observe that n a(n)n− := ξ−(s) ζ(s) cannot be an Euler product: By (1.11), we may find a negative D 3 (mod 9) and− many primes p for which a( D) = 0 and a( Dp2) > 0. P ≡ − − 4 FRANK THORNE To prove that that ξ−(s) ζ(s) is not a sum of k Euler products, for any k > 1, we choose appropriate discriminants D− and primes p such that a( D p2) > 0 if and only if i = j. i i − i j Then a(n) “takes too many parameters to describe,” and we will formalize this using an elementary linear algebra argument. The argument for the positive discriminant case is mildly more complicated, but essen- tially the same. Closing remarks. Although we cheerfully admit that a positive result would be more interesting than the present paper, we submit that our negative result is interesting as well. One motivation for our work comes from our previous paper [20], where we studied the Shintani zeta functions analytically, obtaining (limited) results on the location of the zeroes. These zeta functions essentially fit into the Selberg class, which naturally leads to a host of questions. For example, do most of the zeroes of the Shintani zeta functions lie on the critical line? Work of Bombieri and Hejhal [3] establishes that this is true for certain finite sums of L-functions, conditional on standard hypotheses for these L-functions (including GRH).